Mid-Week Coffee Break with Martha Reich

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Katie: So I’m sitting here with Martha Reich. Martha, welcome.

Martha: Thank you.

Katie: It’s so nice to be sitting here with you. Martha is from New Mexico and she’s in town for the Hollywood Music and Media Awards, which she got nominated for. Congratulations.

Martha: Thank you so much.

Katie: And I had the pleasure of seeing you perform live last night too, which was just really outstanding. So it’s really nice to have you in town here.

Martha: It’s wonderful to be here and I was so happy to see you last night. I forgot that I even invited you actually. So I was like “Oh my gosh! Wonderful”.

Katie: I just show up, you know?

Martha: It’s great.

Katie: It’s nice. We really try to emphasize community at Standing ‘O’ and Art of the Song and to us that’s important. John and Viv just sent out a newsletter actually where they were like, “Ok, we’re making a commitment to go out and see live music once a week” and I was like, “I think that sounds like a real good commitment to make”. Especially during times like these.

Martha: Yeah, it’s true.

Katie: Music is healing and I think we could use some healing now too. You have a lot of familiarity with that so I’m looking forward to delving into that, but before we do, I want to know a little bit more about your history of how you started in music and all that jazz, no pun intended.

Martha: Well I started really playing air guitar at the kitchen table when I was like nine years old and I just really loved, I don’t know why, but I just really wanted to play guitar. So, after doing that for a while, my parents said, “Sure, we’ll get you a guitar” and I took very briefly just regular lessons of learning chords and reading music and then I took actually a year of classical lessons on a Wurlitzer Steel String guitar, because that’s what my parents got. They didn’t know anything about music so that’s what they got me.

Katie: Yeah, that’s not typical to do classical on a steel string. That’s so funny.

Martha: I didn’t know I was going to take classical lessons. I don’t even know how that happened, but I just decided to do that. So that really taught me fingerpicking and that carried through today. I’m a much stronger fingerstyle than strumming and such, but I remember my guitar teacher said, “You should get a classical guitar” but I didn’t.

Katie: So you went your own way and you forged classical on steel string.

Martha: Years later I have a nylon string and did get a classical guitar and they’re beautiful. So at first I would just play classical pieces and then I would also play cover songs and then, when I was, even younger, I started making up songs. Really just kind of goofy songs, but it was fun. I also would sing in the back of our car when we would go on trips. I always liked doing that, but never in front of people because I was very, very shy.

Katie: Was anyone in your family musical?

Martha: Not in my immediate family but I do have a few cousins that are really talented musicians, but not like my parents or brother or anything.

Katie: Then how did you get over that shyness and get up in front of people?

Martha: Well, I’m still not over it. But once I started writing my own songs, then when I was living in Massachusetts I would go to open mics and would go to performances like folk things and I said, “Whoa, that’s an opportunity to play my songs”. So I was like, “Ok, I’m going to go sign up” and I would go and I would be so nervous and I would always feel like, “Gosh, I sounded really good in the living room but now I don’t really sound so good.” But, for some reason, there was just something in me that said, “You have to keep doing this, even though it’s really hard.” It was. It was really hard for me to do it and now, many years later, I see why. The songs that I write, the response I get from people, it just really talks to them, it touches their hearts, and it usually echoes some story in their life or how they feel about themselves and they’ll come and tell me that, and that is the most rewarding thing. And often, also, it makes people cry. So that’s the kind of music that I do, especially if it’s performed in an environment where people can really listen. And I never thought that would happen starting out. I think, I know, it has been a healing journey for me to be able to express myself, especially through song and that creative process to be able to write whatever I want and then put the music with the words and then to find that it touches people in that way is just really amazing.

Katie: Oh I’m sure. Ok, so going back to when you started this journey, I know that we were talking last night and you were saying that you actually dabbled in the visual arts for quite a long time (and dabbled is too slight a word), but that you were involved in that primarily before you got involved in music? How did that transition come about for you?

Martha: When I was a teenager, I was writing poetry and doing the music. I didn’t really put it together as much of like the songwriting so much.

Katie: Oh that’s interesting.

Martha: Yeah, it was like the classical or covering other people’s things, and then writing the poetry. Then, I’d share it with my mom or my family. They kind of thought it was dark.

Katie: No, I get you!

Martha: They totally thought it was dark.

Katie: I completely understand. Your poems, were they similar to the way you write lyrics now, out of curiosity?

Martha: It’s changed. I have found some of that old poetry and it was like, “Wow, that is really dark”. But I think, for me, it was that teenage time period because I think a lot of teenagers maybe go through that. But for me, I just looked at life that way.

Katie: That’s a dramatic time I think.

Martha: It is. It’s a transitional time for people. But, at the same time, I was very interested in drawing and painting and so I started just doing that on my own and my mom said, “Well, I think you’re really talented with your art, maybe you want to pursue that.” So I really got more support around my visual arts at the time. So I majored in high school in art and then I decided to go to art school and I majored in illustration and I was really interested in lots of mediums. I worked in clay and paint. So many things. I ended up making quilts.

Katie: And silkscreen you were saying.

Martha: Silkscreen, printmaking. I did jewelry. Actually after school I became a jeweler. I went to school part-time Parsons in New York, the school of design. So we’d be working on our art projects and they had this great stairwell that I would take my guitar and I would play in the stairway because it had that great echo, but I thought nobody could hear me.

Katie: It’s like the beauty of, ok, it’s perfect acoustics with the stairwell and then it can kind of be like the secretive little haven.

Martha: Totally. I found out later some people could hear me but I was like “ok”. So, later on, I have designed the cover of my CD called “Evidence of Life”, it’s like a drawing of mine. Nowadays, actually when I travel, I take usually a little notebook and I do these little watercolors. They’re kind of like little postcards that I create.

Katie: Then how did you make that transition to say, “I want to do the music and pursue that at more of the forefront than the visual arts”?

Martha: Ok, you know, it was actually not so much a conscious decision. I was a jeweler professionally for quite a few years, like fifteen years or something, and I actually got to a point where I wanted to change my field and I got into doing energy work and then I went to massage school. So that was kind of this transition from the arts into the healing arts. Then, no matter what I was doing, the music was always there. Always in the background. But I was always doing it. So I was living in Massachusetts and I was a jeweler and I was going to massage school and then after massage school I decided to move to Santa Fe, New Mexico. When I moved there, I just really thought that I was going to be a potter, jeweler, and massage therapist, but I was writing songs and when I moved there, my boyfriend at the time said, “Let’s just record these” and I was like, “Ok”. So I made an album. When I had ten songs, it was like, “Should I print this album? I’m not sure if it’s really good enough.” And he said, “Yeah, just print it. Just make it.” So I did. It’s called “The Color of Blue” and it’s my very first album. Then I got them back, 500 copies, and I was like, “Well, I guess I have to play out now because I have these CDs”.

Katie: Oh my gosh, so the CDs came actually before playing out.

Martha: Pretty much. You know, besides open mics.

Katie: Wow. What a unique trajectory.

Martha: Kind of reversed from a lot of people.

Katie: Yeah, but it makes sense too if it was something where you were kind of shy and it was very personal and when you were expressing yourself creatively before, I’m sure being in the visual arts you kind of have that little bubble where you don’t have to be interacting in front of people.

Martha: Exactly. Very much.

Katie: And raw and vulnerable.

Martha: That’s exactly it. It’s interesting because when I told him, “Well, now I’m going to play out”, he was like, “Are you sure that you want to do that?” He’s a musician as well as an engineer and I said, “Well, yeah, why?” and he goes, “Well, I know you’re really sensitive and what if you have a bad night”. I think he was just trying to protect me, but I was like, “No, I’m going to play out. Yeah.”

Katie: You’re like, “No, I’m stronger than this, just because I’m scared doesn’t mean that I’m weak.” I think that there’s a large misconception there too because I think a lot of people they see artists and musicians in the popular culture and they think, “Oh gosh, that’s a really confident person and that’s a really outgoing person”. I think that they don’t always give credit to the fact that you can be scared shitless and still go out.

Martha: I know and I hear stories of amazing people who literally get sick before they perform. It’s just like, really? Because, again, the idea is that what I get is just so confident and everything. So I really had so much support so I started playing. I had my CD release party in Santa Fe. The whole community was just really, really supportive of me.

*Dog barks*

Katie: That’s my dog. He’s defending the house right now.

Martha: Thank you Bones. Appreciate that. That was actually a conscious decision obviously to play out and then promote the CDs, but I think that actually the music, I don’t know how to say it, it almost led me. I didn’t say, “Yeah this is what I’m going to do”, you know what I mean? It was really odd.

Katie: You know, it’s funny, I actually can relate to that. I think that sometimes you don’t even realize that you’re doing it or that it’s such a big part of your life and then one day it sneaks up and you’re like, “Oh I’m doing this”. It seems like from your transition from doing it always in the background, but it seems like your transition from you went to massage therapy, and you did the healing, and I know that you did music healing as well, it seems like it just kind of was like, oh, it’s just going to become more and more important in your life.

Martha: That’s exactly it. It was like I just couldn’t. I had to do it. There was one short period of time that I did not play for some reason and then when I picked up the guitar it was like I had forgotten some things and I remember saying, “You know what? I will never do that again. I will always play the guitar. I don’t want to put it aside, even if it’s not publicly or whatever.” So that was a conscious decision just to always play it. But then, I was saying earlier, I thought I would do ceramics and massage, but the music just took over my life. It just became forefront.

Katie: Can I ask you, because I’m really curious about this, what did the music help you express that you couldn’t express through the visual arts or through being a jeweler or through being a healer?

Martha: That’s a really good question. A very personal question but yeah.

Katie: Sorry.

Martha: No, it’s a great question. Well, growing up, I really was very insecure and even my self-esteem was not so great so whatever ideas I had about myself, I could put them maybe in visual, but not in the way that words could express, at least for me. Maybe some visual artists could do that but, for me, the words, the language, could express those things of how I really felt about myself and the insecurities or even how I see the world and even actually the beauty that I see in the world. My songs are all about what I see–nature, people, animals, relationships between everything. It’s almost too complicated for me to make a picture, but a picture in words.

Katie: And singing it too because there’s this added vulnerability when you’re singing versus when you’re just speaking or having a conversation, and I find, and I’m sure you do too, that sometimes putting things in words, putting the words together in a way that you don’t always say in day-to-day conversation and singing them adds this level of “Oh, that’s dropping to the core right there.”

Martha: Definitely, and that brings me to the other thing that having a voice, if you could write words or I could write words but never speak them out loud, and singing it’s that other element that’s even deeper. But the other thing was, sometimes I would get that message that it’s not ok to say or have a voice and express myself the way that I wanted to or the things that I really felt and to sing, actually I never felt that I had a good voice. So, when I did start singing, people actually commented on my voice at first. Like, “You have a beautiful voice” and I was like, “Really?” But yeah, that whole psychology too about the voice and the vocal chords and when you get nervous you tighten and when you’re free and so much expression in singing and voice.

Katie: Was there something in particular that made you feel like you didn’t have a good voice growing up? Or was it just kind of like that fear and insecurity that was inherent?

Martha: Yeah, maybe because I was so shy that maybe I don’t know how many people really even heard my voice, but also because I think the way I was I didn’t really project so much and I wasn’t confident to really sing out. No one told me that “Oh you don’t have a good voice”. It’s just this idea that I had.

Katie: It’s so nerve-wracking. When I started taking vocal lessons, it was a few years before I started dabbling and doing the songwriting and everything and singing, I was so scared and I sang so quietly that whenever I tried to sing louder I would just tear up and it would just start being so emotional because it’s hard if you’re a person who has been insecure about speaking out, it’s hard to actually project and get your voice out there and doing it through song is just this incredibly powerful medium. So having to do that, I can completely relate.

Martha: Yeah, and then the other thing about it, which is interesting to me, is so I became a massage therapist and I’ve been working professionally as a massage therapist exactly the same amount of time as when I started playing out professionally. So that’s interesting. And what I’ve learned also through the bodywork and energy and, you know, we have these chakras and the throat chakra is this transition part from our heart to our head. Also, often, that’s a difficult place to transition and, when I’m performing, a lot of times; I can simultaneously hear this voice in my head saying these things to me. Then the other part of my brain is just in that performing mode and it’s really an interesting place to be. It’s like listening to what chord is next? Or are you doing that right? Or wow, they’re really talking loud over there. Then I’m singing my song and, it doesn’t happen as much as it used to, but it used to happen a lot that I would hear both the voices while I was performing. But the other thing now what I try to do before I’m going to do a performance is I really do meditation and go to this place in my heart so that I’m really coming from my heart when I perform. So it’s really been such a blessing, the massage and the music and it all came together. It’s like these two paths that are actually along one.

Katie: Yeah they seem parallel. They seem like they’ve really been leading you toward something cohesive and something merged together. I’m curious, when you do music healing for people, how does that work? I don’t even know. I hadn’t really heard about it until you were talking about it last night and I was like, “Well that’s cool”. We’ve really been emphasizing lately on Art of the Song and Standing ‘O’ how music heals and I just thought, I was like, “Whoa, you are perfect person to talk to about this.” So I’m curious.

Martha: Wow, that’s great. Well, I have always been, I discovered I was really drawn to the area of grief and loss and I actually went to the Southwest College for the certificate program on grief and loss. It was like 10 weekend session classes and the first one a woman came in and she was a thanatologist, I guess that’s someone that plays for people that are dying. She played the harp and it was absolutely beautiful. I forgot her last name…Judith… maybe it’ll come to me, but it was very inspiring and, at that moment, I said, “That is what I want to do” because, even though as a kid, I fantasized about being in a rock and roll band and such, I was never really that. So I said, “Well, I don’t really want to be like a talk therapist, but I want to do music and healing”. So I actually went to school to a place called “Music for Healing and Transition Program” and they trained us to learn the different ways to play for different people. So, say somebody dying for hospice, or transitioning, you actually play music that has no rhythm to it and lots of lots of space because, if somebody is leaving this world, you don’t want to anchor them here with something like a regular rhythm or something that they might know. You want them to have the space to move on.

Katie: To be free and expand out of this set pattern that we’ve had in this life.

Martha: Exactly. So that’s one element and then the idea of people being in pain and what kind of music would be soothing for them. If someone has heart issues then you do want to play a certain kind of rhythm but there’s this thing called entrainment where you want to meet them where they are first. So say they have an irregular heartbeat, you might play something irregular or, if they have a fast heartbeat, you would play something fast and then you would slowly go down slower rhythm to bring their heart rate down. So that’s one way of it being very healing.

Katie: That’s so fascinating.

Martha: Yeah, it is an amazing field. So I actually worked, I did some work with hospice by the bedside in hospitals and, for about a year and a half, I played at cancer centers when they were receiving chemo and it was a way for them to re-focus or maybe focus on something else besides that they are receiving chemotherapy and my music is very soothing so it put them at ease. So that’s just some of the ways—you can play for surgery, post-surgery, pre-surgery, prenatal, all kinds of situations.

Katie: Wow. Ok, I’m really fascinated by this, this is really cool to me but, going from physical healing to emotional and spiritual healing, it sounds like just listening to your songs, it sounds like that theme of healing carries over into your lyrics when you’re playing out as well, would you agree with that?

Martha: I do agree with that. That’s interesting. I believe that the emotional and the spiritual and the physical, they’re all connected. You can’t really separate them. Maybe some people wouldn’t agree with that. So what I have found is that does carry through in my songs.

Katie: Yeah, because you even won an award for a protest song as well I was reading on your site. You’ve won multiple awards too, well-deserved, but I was just thinking about that too while you were talking as I was listening through your lyrics and your beautiful lyrics on “Peace Harvest” your recent EP and listening through “God’s Eyes” and I was just like, “Oh, I feel healed listening to this too” and I just feel like it’s just something so beautiful to me that you do that too. Talk to me a little bit about how you incorporate that spiritual element into your lyrics when you sit down to write.

Martha: Thank you, that’s a great question. Well, you talked about “God’s Eyes”, that song took me a long time to write it because I wasn’t sure if I should really say what I was really feeling in a song. I was like, “Should I really write this?” So of course I struggled with writing the song because I’m questioning what to really put down, but when I just said, “You know, just write what you feel. Just write what’s really in your heart and if people don’t like it, you just have to do it.” And what I was feeling at that time was really the conflict, on a personal level, in my own life, and internal, and then I was noticing it out in the world. I had actually just bought my first home in Santa Fe and I noticed that there were sirens out on the street a lot. Sometimes at like 2 in the morning and I thought, “Oh my gosh, have I moved into the wrong neighborhood?” Just noticing what’s going on in the world and war, and I was like, “Gosh, there’s so much turmoil and conflict”. I just was really aware of it at that time. Also, so the song talks about patterns repeating themselves and I was noticing that. I was noticing on a personal level how I can repeat patterns. I noticed it in my friends. I noticed it in the world. Wars. And beautiful things too repeat patterns. So that song came out. The first line is, “I see history repeating itself.” Once I said, “You’re just going to write what’s in your heart” The song just came out. So I guess I just can’t separate spirituality and creativity. Maybe that’s the answer to your question really. I’m also a meditator.

Katie: To me, it just makes me feel a little teary talking about it, but I think it was drawing attention to a very important issue with our humanity, but it felt so connected. I think that I feel that way about a lot of your music as well, that it helps your listener rekindle a sense of spirituality or at least that’s how I felt when listening to it. It’s just beautiful. But, to continue on talking about your EP, “I’d Rather Be Surprised” has met with a lot of success as well. Talk to me a little about the inspiration behind that.

Martha: That song, I get kind of teary-eyed thinking about that one. So what happened is a really dear friend of mine, Susan, Susie Reddick is her name, she died. She died really suddenly. Before she died, she was in a coma and I actually was just putting out my most recent full-length CD called “In To Trees” and I found out she was in the hospital and I had the CD Release party planned and I was like, “Should I go back? Should I cancel that and just go back and see her in New York?” And I just prayed about it and I said, “She’d want me to do the CD Release Party”. So I did the CD Release party and it was so hard. Then, the next morning I left really early for the airport. So I got there to the hospital and she never came out of her coma, but I did bring my guitar and I played music for her. At first….

Katie: Sorry, just getting a little teary here.

Martha: You asked me the question.

Katie: I did, I did, I brought this on. I’m really glad you’re sharing this as well.

Martha: Yeah, I’m not one of those lightweights I guess. So I brought my guitar and I thought, I’m going to do that healing and transition stuff for my friend and then I realized our other dear friend was there and she said, “You know, you’re not going to save her” and I was like, “Oh my god, I’m not”. So I changed my focus, it was really just saying goodbye to her. So I said goodbye to her with my music. But during the whole process, people were asking questions about, “Ok, where is she at and maybe you can try this to help her”. All the questions to me were really painful. It was like, “No, this is just where she is at and she’s going to die.” So she did and then afterwards, I guess the whole idea was, it was totally surprising. It was shocking. Then the first line of the song is, “Don’t ask me no more questions because I don’t know anything anymore”. And that’s how I felt. I don’t know anything. When you’re grieving, I feel like that’s often the case. You don’t really know where you are and what’s going on. Then that idea came to me that even living in this world, I’d rather be surprised about things. I’d rather not know often what’s going to happen and live in that kind of grey area. To me, that’s really the magic in life. Even thought it can be sometimes very scary, but that’s where all this beauty happens. In hardship too. But that’s where I’d like to be and also I felt like that’s how a baby is and the lines in the song are like, “Like a newborn baby”. They’re just open and surprised in this wonder it seems like. When they cry, when something bothers them, they just cry. Then, when they’re happy, they just laugh. So that’s really the inspiration of that song.

Katie: I think there’s something really wonderful about living in that uncertainty and it strikes me that you were talking about the woman that you had run into, with the transitioning for death music, where it’s this open, non-structured form, and you doing it as well. It sounds to me that theme and that openness really carried through in this song as well and that need to be in that open space and maybe we would do a little better in our day-to-day lives with that too. Just transitioning.

Martha: Maybe.

Katie: It sounds like you did a beautiful job with that. Getting a little teary again. What I’m really curious about too, you were saying to me last night that before you had gotten nominated for this Hollywood Music and Media award, you were actually thinking about quitting, what brought you to that space and what brought you out of that space? Because I know that a lot of our listeners are musicians as well and are artists as well and they go through some of those harder times.

Martha: Actually it was probably about a couple years ago and it was before I put out that two song EP “Peace Harvest”. So I was playing at “The Bitter End” in New York City and I asked my friends to do a video, take a film of me performing and then, afterwards, I said, “Hey, let me look at that” and I looked at it and I’m sure I was being very critical of myself, but I just felt like it wasn’t very good. Well, it’s not like I felt like I was a terrible musician, but I said, “Maybe I’m not so good at performing live”. So I seriously said, “I think I’m going to stop performing live and maybe just find a different avenue for the music. Maybe just recordings or the music for healing.” Literally, the next day, I got a Facebook message from the Southwest Independent Music Awards saying I had been nominated. I was very skeptical and I was like, “Oh, it’s probably a scam or whatever”. But I looked it up and realized it’s not a scam. It’s the first time I had actually been nominated for something where I didn’t actually enter. So somebody anonymously nominated me. I still don’t know who it was.

Katie: Well that’s a little guardian angel right there.

Martha: That’s right. I was like, “I guess that’s a sign from the universe.” And I put this post on Facebook that told that story and how I was going to quit, and then I said, “But look what happens when you follow your heart”. That’s basically what music is for me is just following my heart. Since that time, I did win the Southwest Independent Music Awards. “Peace Harvest” won best album. “I’d Rather Be Surprised” won best folk song. Then, it’s gone on. So I think it was the universe just saying, “Ok, well you have this thought Martha that you should quit, but you’re not gonna.”

Katie: That’s so funny. Now, you’ve also toured with your husband as well. How is that, touring with your husband who is a spiritual author as well, and you’ve performed in front of, you were saying, five thousand people. Which my heart stopped on your behalf. You’re a fantastic musician and fantastic performer, but my own stagefright is like, “Ah, five thousand people!”

Martha: Well, we met as musicians. I was playing at a restaurant in Santa Fe.

Katie: Annapurna for those of you listening out there too.

Martha: The great Annapurna restaurant, which actually burnt down after we met.

Katie: Oh it did?

Martha: It’s a new location.

Katie: Oh, ok, I didn’t realize that. I used to go to the one in Albuquerque once in a while.

Martha: Oh, that one’s still there.

Katie: Yeah, that one’s still there.

Martha: Yeah so that one moved to another location. Anyway, he’s an author and speaker and we were talking and he said he really liked my music and asked if I wanted to get more exposure. Of course I said, “Yes” and then he invited me to play at a conference that he was speaking at and first he told me they’ll be five thousand people or something and I said, “I don’t really think I can do that” because I’m used to playing for thirty, fifty people or something. Then he said, “Well, maybe it will only be like seven hundred”. And I was like, “Ok, only seven hundred”.

Katie: No big deal.

Martha: Oh yeah. But I started, at this time in my life; it was like “Say yes to things. Just say yes and do your best to do it.” So I said, “Ok, I’ll do it.” So he totally warmed up the audience with what he speaks about and then, because he’s a musician as well, he plays flute and guitar and writes songs….

Katie: He played flute on “God’s Eyes” too. I was thinking about that while listening and I was like, “Oh, what a beautiful synergy between these two people”.

Martha: Yeah, I owe him so much and that song “God’s Eyes” we recorded it so that he could be on it and then we actually had the community college in Santa Fe make a video of “God’s Eyes”.

Katie: Oh yeah, I saw that too. It’s so beautiful. If I wasn’t teary already…. You guys should check it out, by the way. It’s on Martha’s website. Marthareich.com.

Martha: So we would just do that song. We would do “God’s Eyes” together often at the end of his talk and people really liked it. I felt so like it was so comforting to have him play with me. So it’s like, “I’m not up there by myself and we’re doing this together.” Then, eventually, it got to where people would invite me to do concerts at the events or he would say, “You want to do a concert?” So it’s been great and it’s been a good learning experience.

Katie: What a wonderful thing to find a partner and be able to share in that really important aspect and, since spirituality too is so important for both of you, to be able to connect on that level and share in your different ways and come together, I just think that’s beautiful. Well, we’re actually right out of time here, but before we go, I just want to say, your cover of “Moon River”, oh my gosh. It is so incredible. What made you decide to cover that song? I just adored it so much.

Martha: Thank you so much. I actually had hear Patty Griffin cover that song at a concert and I was like, “Oh my gosh” because I’m a huge fan of Patty Griffin and I was like, “Wow” so I was like, “I’m going to cover that song”. Also, the music for healing, one of the things is playing for people with Alzheimer’s or dementia; you play the old time songs.

Katie: Something that they can grab onto mentally. That makes a lot of sense.

Martha: Yes. It’s been amazing. I love doing that. So “Moon River” was one of those songs so I was like, “Yeah, I’m just going to do this, and a lot of people really like that version that I did.”

Katie: Yeah, it’s gorgeous, so you out there should go listen to it. So, before we go, do you have any advice for songwriters out there? People starting out. People going through their journey, even if they’re in the middle of their journey.

Martha: Yeah. I have a really good friend, Nina Hart, who’s an amazing writer and she’s a musician too as well and a dancer, but these days too she’s a writer. She has been such a support. There’s been a few times in my life where I’m like, “Oh I just want to give up”. So one time she told me the story of Vincent Van Gogh. When he was alive, people didn’t really get him. They didn’t really appreciate him and it wasn’t until he died that people started to appreciate him. But I’ve always loved Vincent Van Gogh and thought he was a beautiful painter. But she said, “People didn’t get him when he was alive, but look at how people love him now. Don’t give up. Just keep doing your art.” So anyone out there that feels like people don’t get you or you’re just really struggling, just pursue what’s in your heart. Just keep following your heart and it won’t steer you wrong. No matter what.”

Katie: Martha Reich, thank you so much for talking with me today. I really appreciate it.